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The moment he wakes up Shinichi knows something is wrong.
Not because of a feeling, or the fact that his head is swimming with pain, but because of Ran’s worried expression as he blinks his way into consciousness. She leans forward, hands wrapped around his, squeezing lightly to show that she’s there.
“Shinichi?” She stumbles over his name as she stands from her chair, leaning forward to get into his view. She’s wearing her coat over her school uniform, which… Is odd, seeing as the last thing Shinichi remembers is it being a Saturday, and them having no classes. “H-hey, are you really awake?”
Around her the room is a sterile white, almost blinding to his eyes.
“Ran-” He pauses, surveys the room as he tries to get to grips with his location. He knows the word he’s looking for, but it’s on the tip of his tongue, a headache blocking the name. “Where are we?”
Ran’s nose scrunches, and she leans forward, looking closer at him, as if she just wants to make sure that he’s alright. Shinichi thinks he’d appreciate the sentiment more, if he actually understood properly why he wouldn’t be alright – why is he in a hospital room, he wonders?
Ah – hospital. The word he’d been searching for. He glances back at Ran, attempting to sit up in an attempt to face her more thoroughly. There’s an I.V drip in his hand, and Shinichi has to restrain the temptation to scratch at the skin around it.
“The police found you and an ambulance brought you here,” Ran says, and she moves back temporarily to help him sit up. “I’m so glad you’re awake… but what happened?”
Shinichi’s throat seems to close up as he rakes his brain for some sort of idea. He’s… not sure what exactly happened, and when he opens his mouth to response, all he can form is a barely audible, “what? I… can’t remember…?”
Ran takes a step nearer to him, moves to put her hand back on his but moves back at the last second. Something seems to change in her expression, shifting from relief back into worry. She leans on the rails of his hospital bed, bites her lower lip and asks, “hey are you okay?”
Placing the back of her hand on his forehead, Ran continues, “you feel like you’ve got a fever. Shinichi…?”
His vision blurs, and even though he’s sat down, Shinichi feels a wave of dizziness run through him, feels nausea bubble up in from his stomach. And still he searches for whatever memories he seems to be missing, asks himself to recount the latest memories from before he’d woken at the hospital.
Tropical land – Ran had wanted to go, as a reward for winning her latest karate competition, and Shinichi had been getting dressed on his way to go there.
“But you know,” Ran says now, interrupting his thoughts, “I’m really glad I came…”
Shinichi offers a small hum, continues to think. He’d gotten dressed, and he’d left his house to meet up with Ran – he’d bought the tickets and… and…
A wave of pain shoots through his head. He hunches over, ribs aching, his entire body screaming at him, synapses burning up. His breath hitches against his throat, forcing him to dissolve into coughs. He clutches at his head, pulls at his head but the pain remains.
And his sight stays blurred, out of focus. The only thing he can see if Ran’s hands moving from where she’s leaning, as she pushes back. She claims, “I’ll go get the doctor, Shinichi, stay here!”
Shinichi doesn’t even argue with that. Moving right now… he knows that it’s a stupid idea. Instead, he grits his teeth, brows furrowed and tries to focus on something other than the thumping he feels against his skull. It’s doesn’t work.
What… what is this?
“Yeah,” Shinichi says instead, as Ran races around the bed towards the door of the room.
“Don’t push yourself,” Ran calls back, even though they both know she won’t be gone for any longer than two minutes, “you’ve been out for three days.”
The doctors decide to book him in for an (f)MRI.
“We made brain scans when you were unconscious,” his doctor tells him as he’s helped into a wheelchair – help, that frankly Shinichi doesn’t think he needs. A headache doesn’t mean he needs help to move. “But that only scanned unconscious functions, not your conscious thoughts.”
Shinichi bites his lip, watches Ran out of the corner of his eye as she walks beside him, her hand resting on his shoulder. It’s comforting, he thinks, although he can’t wait until he can go home. Being in the hospital leaves him uneasy, a sense of dread chilling his bones.
“Okay.” Shinichi says.
“There shouldn’t be any long-lasting problems,” the doctor continues, as they take the elevator down to the MRI machine, heading towards the neurology department. “You’re previous scans showed there were no fractures, despite the blunt trauma, which… you’re very lucky in that regard.”
Funny, Shinichi thinks, he doesn’t feel very lucky.
“But Shinichi’s pain-” Ran trails off before she can form a proper question. She glances at Shinichi, offers him another one of her worried smiles. It’s more of a grimace, but Shinichi can’t blame her. He can’t form a full smile either.
“It’s often a symptom of trauma like this,” his doctor says, pushing the wheelchair forward, “although they should abate in a few days. We’ll prescribe some painkillers while you recover, but the pain should be fully gone within a few weeks.”
Shinichi glances down at his hands. Remembers the way he’d felt like the world was going black, vision closing in. He hopes he doesn’t have to experience it again, not even once.
“And my memories?” Shinichi asks, as they reach the radiology department, making their way towards the room that houses the MRI machine, “how long until they come back.”
He already knows the answer, but he wants someone else to say it.
“That depends on you,” the doctor says, “some people go on to remember their lost memories, and some people never regain them. It differs between individuals.”
The only thing, Shinichi thinks, is that he’s not sure whether he’ll be part of the group that remembers. And he knows that it’s going to drive him insane if he never finds out the truth of what happened to injure him – what had he been doing, to receive a blow to the back of the head?
“Just in here, you’ll have to take any metal off, before you go in,” the doctor says, and Shinichi readies himself for the upcoming test.
Shinichi leaves two days later with painkillers and a report that the MRI scan had given good results.
The only issue, his doctor had said, is that the hippocampus seems less active than on the average scan. That’s the centre for memory though, and it should become more active the longer you stay conscious.
He walks beside Ran on their way out of the hospital, their pace slow as he makes his way towards the exit. He’s not dizzy, not any more although it comes back in flashes, like the way hot flushes occur during a fever. It’s irritating, but ultimately, there isn’t anything Shinichi can do other than take a moment to sit down and wait for the vertigo to pass.
“I’ll cook you something to eat,” Ran says when they’re outside, cool air brushing against their skin. She pulls him towards the car park – apparently she’s talked the Professor into picking them both up, to avoid expensive taxi fares – and offers him a smile. “How does curry sound?”
“Sounds good,” Shinichi says, as they cross the street, making their way towards the yellow outline of the Professor’s car, the colour standing out against black and blue cars surrounding it. “I’m gonna have to catch up with school work though…”
Ran scrunches her nose, shaking her head. She says, “you need to recover, the doctor said you shouldn’t go back to school until Monday at the earliest. Try to give yourself another day to rest before you worry about class.”
She doesn’t mention that she doubts Shinichi needs the extra revision – he’s been ahead for months, always one step ahead of the rest of his class – but he can see it in the way her eyes shift. How she shakes her head in disbelief at him.
“You’ll lend me your notes then?” Shinichi asks, and receives a nod.
And like that, life seems to go back to normal.
It’s almost as if nothing has changed.
Returning to school is odd.
Surrounded by all of the noise of classmates talking by the lockers is distracting, and his head throbs, a small dull headache that seems to follow him around whenever it gets too loud. He’s immediately trapped by a crowd of his classmates, each asking about why he’s been absent, whether it’s true that he’s been in hospital.
“For a little while,” Shinichi says, trailing off slightly, “but I’m fine now.”
Someone asks whether it was to do with a case and Shinichi pauses, his expression shuttering into something unreadable as he tries to think. Even after a week of recovery the memories haven’t returned and as this point, he doubts they ever will. He’s either suppressed them, or they’re simply… gone.
If they’ve been suppressed, then Shinichi’s pretty sure that he doesn’t want them back.
“I don’t really remember,” he says, and glances outside of the crowd to where Ran stands, waiting for him to join her on their way to class. He excuses himself, races up to her and offers a thankful smile.
Beside her, Sonoko leans forward and says, “husbands don’t worry their wives you know. You shouldn’t go running off to find trouble so often.”
It’s difficult to admit, but she’s right. From what he’s been told, he’d left Ran behind at Tropical land, to go check something out – and two hours later the police had found him unconscious, a wound to the back of the head. It just feels like a fact though, not something that has any meaning behind it…
“I won’t go looking for trouble again,” Shinichi says, although he’s certain that it’s a lie. Crime scenes have all sorts of trouble written all over them. “It’s not worth the headache.”
He gets dubious looks in response.
(Later, when they’re walking home from school, Shinichi asks Ran if she minds letting him borrow the day’s notes. He receives a frown in response, and all he can do is rub the back of his neck almost embarrassed.
“I read ahead in the textbook,” Shinichi lies, “and I forgot to write anything down.”
Ran huffs out a sigh and says that he can borrow them for an hour to make his own of them. Which, she says, is more than he deserves.
He doesn’t want to admit that during their classes, the whiteboard had felt so far away, his vision blurred until the kanji had just seemed like squiggles on a board. He takes the notes and decides that it’s just part of the recovery process. His sight will be back to normal soon.)
He gets a migraine during the first murder he attends.
It leaves him reeling, feeling like he might be sick, and he has to sit down for a second in an attempt to stop feeling so out of it. He grabs a water bottle from his school bag, takes one of the painkillers that he keeps in his pocket for when the pain grows too intense, and tries to figure out the trick behind this particular locked room murder.
His mind wonders why it always seems to be locked room murders. Surely murderers aren’t all creative geniuses who plan ahead. Aren’t most murders supposed to be spur of the moment?
“Do you have any idea who could have done this?” Inspector Megure asks as he rejoins the investigation, squinting to try and see finer details. It’s a particularly gruesome crime scene, with bits of blood and bone splattered against concrete. Apparently a man had thrown himself from a window, the room behind him locked from the inside.
No one thinks that it was suicide, mainly because the window that the man had thrown himself out of had been closed after his death. A rookie mistake, Shinichi thinks, for a murderer who’d planned so far in advance.
“I have a few ideas.” Shinichi says, before pausing. “Do you mind if I borrow that notepad of yours Inspector?”
Megure says says, hands it over, along with a pen, and Shinichi scrawls his theories onto paper. It’s impossible with a headache like his to keep it stored internally, and by the time he figures the suspect out on paper, he feels like he might throw up.
He takes a deep breath, stares at the hand he raises in front of his eyes and wonders what the hell is happening to him.
Surely he should be better by now? Instead, his head still hurts and his sight is suffering because of it.
“Kudo-kun?” Megure says.
Shinichi looks up, offers a sharp nod and grits his teeth. He says, “I know who the killer is, Inspector.”
And he presents his deductions.
It takes Ran a while to notice anything, weeks pass with Shinichi offering half-smiles whenever he feels like his head’s going to explode, and she’s none the wiser. In fact, she only finds out because of an altercation in their classroom.
They’re sat learning maths, when their teacher asks Shinichi for the answer to what’s on the board.
And Shinichi, unable to actually see the board, falters in his confidence. He squints, straining his eyes to read the equations on the board. It takes him a few seconds longer than it usually does, and when he says the answer of 7.84, it sounds more like a question than an answer.
It’s correct, and maybe no one else thinks too closely about it, but Ran does. She makes her way over to his desk during lunch, followed by an unwilling Sonoko and drops her bento box in front of him. Then with her fingers, she points down to small kanji that she’s scrawled into the corner.
“What does that say?” She asks and Shinichi, frowning, responds that it says ‘bumblebee’ on it. Not something he’d expect her to write, but… it’s something.
Then, Ran turns, points over at the board and asks what it says in the corner.
Shinichi glances at the board, realises that his hesitation is proving her point before he can even answer, and scowls. He says, “what does it matter Ran?”
She leans closer, frowning, and says, “you can’t see it.”
He crosses his arms, indignant. There are some things Shinichi won’t admit – like how he’d forgotten their new teacher’s name a few days ago, and has made sure not to refer to him to others by name since, or how he can’t place the memory to the latest invention the Professor has told him about. It’s like his memories are slipping through his mind like water; Not big things, just minor memories, but important all the same.
“Of course I can see it.” Shinichi protests, almost angrily.
Sonoko turns then – maybe there was disbelief when Ran had first brought the idea up, but now she looks convinced. She looks alarmed, almost confused as to why Shinichi’s not admitting it. And she says, “if you can see it, then what does it say.”
Shinichi glances away from them, down at his books and says nothing.
Ran forces him to book a visit to the opticians.
She bites her lip when he comes into school the following week with a new pair of glasses, looking more like his father with every passing second.
It all happens quickly, but to Shinichi, it’s subtle.
It starts with tiny inconsistent things, like misplacing names of the many police officers he’s worked with over time. Forgetting the exact words people had said in his memories, transforming to just paraphrased sentences, copies of the real thing.
Then… he forgets the city in America where his parents live.
His mother, is the first one it seems to worry. Ran and his classmates have seen it all in subtle shifts – it’s not as alarming when it on an accumulative scale – and to them… well, the memory loss isn’t as sudden.
“Shin-chan,” his mother says over the phone, “you remember my friend Leslie, right?”
Shinichi searches his brain, realises that he doesn’t and says, “sure?”
His mother pauses at the question, but continues – it’s not like Shinichi remembers every name she says, sometimes he overlooks the information she gives him as 'unnecessary’ and just disregards it completely. It’s not until Shinichi looks at the clock and pauses.
“Isn’t it late?” Shinichi asks, “it’s like midnight over in new york right?”
Yukiko pauses for a longer time now. There’s movement from the other side of the phone, as if his mother’s rushing from room into another. Then, he hears his father’s name, and his voice as he takes the phone.
“Shinichi, everything alright?”
From where he’s sat in his room, Shinichi frowns. He finds himself staring at the picture he’d taken with Ran that day at tropical land – he wishes that it would mean more to him than it does. Instead, it feels almost fake, like she’d been spending time with his doppelgänger or something…
“Yeah…?” There’s confusion in his voice, because his mother is acting stranger than usual. It’s not just the usual dramatic flair she wears, but something different.
“You’re mother looks worried,” Yuusaku says, “what’s happened?”
Shinichi says nothing. Rakes his brain for something wrong that would worry his mother and comes up short. He throws himself backwards against his bed, closes his eyes and thinks.
“I just asked if it was late.”
His mother’s voice is muffled, but he can hear it in the speaker. He can hear the smallest hitch in his father’s breath – shock, maybe? Which… Is strange seeing as his father doesn’t usually show his worry at all, usually hides behind a calm facade.
When his mother speaks again this time, he’s been placed on speaker phone – he can hear it from the shift in people’s voices, slightly more echoed. She says, “Shinichi you asked what the time was in New York.”
Shinichi frowns. He’d visited his parents in New York with Ran, hadn’t he? And if he’d visited them there, then… doesn’t it make sense that they’d live there?
“Yeah, and?”
His father’s voice sounds strange when he speaks. A mixture of concern and confusion of his own. Almost like there’s an incomplete piece to the puzzle that Shinichi’s presented him with.
“Shinichi, we live in Los Angeles.”